Crashes, Data corruption

Hi,

I bought a laptop a couple months ago (sig) and i noticed i was getting a lot of bsod crashes (things like MEMORY_MANAGEMENT, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA and some others) so i thought it could be my ram. Just ran through memtest86+ and got 600000+ errors all occurring between 4096-6144mb. I assume the next thing to do would be run the test with only one module installed at a time to see which is faulty?

I'm also getting a lot of problems with programs crashing frequently, windows services crashing, and data corruption (im having to constantly 'verify integrity of game cache' on steam games, downloads turn out corrupted about 40% of the time). Things just generally not working on my computer. My question is would this all be caused by bad ram? Is my storage drive also faulty? Or could it be something else?

These problems have all been there from the start (or as long as i can remember). I've recently updated the firmware on my ssd but the problems were exactly the same.

 

It is the ram then. Check one module at a time. Then when you find the faulty one take it out and replace it with one off like newegg. its very cheap to get one 2gb stick of ddr3.
Or even better do you have a warranty or is it still up? if so do that, but the wait will be long, i would just buy a new stick of ram after finding the messed up one. but if you are very cheap and dont mind waiting then do the rma

 

So the bad ram can cause data corruption on the storage drive itself then?

Kobalt computers just went bust so no chance of rma and im not sure if my warranty is still of any use, but if it's definitely just the ram i'd be happy to replace it out of my own pocket as it's quite cheap and easy.

 

Sounds like bad RAM alright.

Testing a new memory module is easy and fairly quick to see if the problem is solved or not. I recommend you test the RAM via a boot up disk and not with any utility that you run inside Windows for this specific problem. (Windows could possibly be corrupt from the known bad RAM stick and it would sway the accuracy of the RAM testing).

Note that it could be the memory slot and/or the M/B too - if anything over 4GB is installed it could still be giving you the same symptoms. Try each RAM module (new, old and all possible combinations) in all the slots available to narrow it down to the RAM, the slot or the M/B.

When you do find out what the issue is and you have corrected it: I would really recommend a complete re-install of your system (back up your data first). You don't want to continue having random glitches because the old/bad RAM corrupted your installation (as it very well could).

You may also want to follow this if you haven't removed/replaced RAM on a notebook already:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/7992639-post4.html


Sorry to hear the business you bought your system from is gone - hope that a simple RAM module and a system re-install solves all these issues you're been having.

Good luck.

 

Thanks a lot for the reply, very helpful.

I booted up memtest86+ from usb stick so it wasn't within windows. I'll give trying all combinations a go, but I'm hoping it's the ram stick as they're pretty cheap to replace. Not sure what I'd do if it was the mobo though!